•   •   •  

Venezuela and Securing Our Borders   [1/27/10]
Rep. Sue Myrick has long been a leader for America's borders, sovereignty and national security. In the Tube below, she explains how Hugo Chavez' Venezuela now provides an easy entrance point for Iranians and other unfriendlies to reach our country through the porous Mexican border.

Rep Myrick also discusses the category of Special Interest Countries, whose citizens (ASICs) receive a higher level of scrutiny when they are caught crossing the border illegally. Special Interest Aliens have been watched for a while -- persons who may pretend to be Mexicans but are Arabs or from other suspicious categories -- but the Venezuela connection is a new element.

Interestingly, every nation on this list is included in the 2010 Diversity Visa Lottery except for Pakistan and the Philippines, which are deemed by the State Deportment to be "not eligible" because we already have plenty of them. (Gaza and the West Bank are not real countries, but are full of jihad enthusiasts.)
    Washington's continuing generosity toward actual and potential enemies is truly astounding, not to mention unserious. The US government has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the country's 1979 Islamic revolution (during which 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days), but Hilary Clinton and company manage to hand out Diversity Visas to those hostile folks. Yemenis attacked the USS Cole in 2000 off the coast of Aden and killed 17 of our sailors, but no problema there either. Dozens of young Somali men have left Minnesota to help out with killing infidels in their beloved homeland, but the doors remain wide open to them as well (including an extra 6000 in the refugee category this year).
    Clearly there is no recognition of a war on terror or against jihadist Islam, whatever you want to call it, in the halls of the State Department.
    Following is a list of Special Interest Countries to which I've added the number of Diversity Visas each received for 2010:

Afghanistan 345, Algeria 1957, Bahrain 15, Bangladesh 6001, Djibouti 33, Egypt 4201, Eritrea 799, Indonesia 277, Iran 2773, Iraq 142, Jordan 143, Kazakhstan 343, Kuwait 70, Lebanon 181, Libya 152, Malaysia 60, Mauritania 20, Morocco 3124, Oman 2, Pakistan ZERO, Philippines ZERO, Qatar 13, Saudi Arabia 104, Somalia 229, Sudan 1084, Syria 98, Tajikistan 178, Tunisia 164, Turkmenistan 108, United Arab Emirates 30, Uzbekistan 4059, Yemen 72, Gaza, West Bank

•   •   •  

Feds find dubious home tax credit claims from Texas   [1/26/10]
"They only come to work"... and commit fraud when possible.

Federal inspectors scouring tax returns that contain a credit for first-time homebuyers have found something curious about claims from Texas.
    Nearly 1,000 were filed by people employing a special taxpayer identification number primarily used by illegal immigrants, who are not entitled to the credit.
    The Texas filings represented nearly one-third of the 3,200 suspicious homebuyer credit claims submitted by noncitizens around the country. The value of the credits from all the noncitizen claims was $20.8 million, a U.S. Treasury Department inspector general said.
    Texas' total was almost double that of similar suspicious filings from California, a state estimated to have nearly twice as many illegal residents.

•   •   •  

Our daughters should not be cut   [1/26/10]
From the Salon webzine: a rare admission from a liberal media outlet that diversity has its costs. As a result of welcoming any and all, America has become the home of cruel and misogynous customs.

Yes, FGM is practiced -- or at least planned -- on U.S. soil, on girls in immigrant families who were born and/or raised here. Perhaps even among people you know: Not long ago, a concerned mother posted on my Brooklyn-area parenting list-serv that she believed an eight-year-old friend of her daughter's had undergone some form of the procedure in her home country in the Middle East (and appeared to be markedly traumatized). Archana Pyati, an asylum attorney for Sanctuary for Families in New York, has encountered dozens of FGM cases just in the past six months. "The majority of our African clients have been through it, and most often, they are fighting to protect their daughters," she says. (Older relatives with "seniority" often push for the procedure.) "It is our hope that by recognizing that FGM may be occurring under our noses we will become better able to respond to it, just as we would any other form of violence against children," she says.
    Right now, though, that's not happening. While numerous countries, cities, and villages on other continents have made significant strides toward prohibiting and preventing the procedure -- and while it's been outlawed by U.S. federal law since 1996 and is also illegal in 17 states -- its practice by immigrant families here is, by all anecdotal reports, only increasing. Yet there remains practically no way to address it any way other than case by brutal, heartbreaking case. "The silence hasn't been broken here," says Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now. "It's an issue that affects thousands of [U.S.] girls, some of whom were born here, and yet no one is really paying attention."

Criminal individuals are not eligible for legal immigration to the United States, but certain cultures with criminal practices are made very welcome indeed. For example the prevalence of FGM among Somalis is 98 percent, yet Somalis are admitted as both immigrants and refugees in large numbers -- over 80,000 in 25 years, as counted up by Refugee Resettlement Watch. And 6000 more are in the pipeline for this year.

•   •   •  

Will Business or Labor Blink First? Immigration Reform and "Future Flows"   [1/25/10]
The author of this Huffpo item is Jeffrey Kaye, who has done immigration reporting for PBS. He is right that the phrase "future flows" is important: it hints at the long-term goal of the open-borders crowd, that legal immigration should be massively increased indefinitely.

Here's a term--one you may be unfamiliar with--to add to your political lexicon: "future flows." In the weeks and months to come, we're going to be hearing it more as Congress very gradually turns its attention to reforming U.S. immigration laws.
    As legislators shape immigration legislation, business and union leaders are battling over the contentious issue of how best to control "future flows" of migrant workers. Even in a lousy economy, businesses want the ability to bring in foreign workers, skilled and unskilled, on both temporary and permanent work visas. A chief criticism by business of the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1986 was that the legislation, signed by President Ronald Reagan, contained provisions that gave workers amnesty (a good thing in their view) but failed to include any allowances for future flows (bad). On the other hand, unions historically have generally opposed temporary worker programs and denounced illegal immigration, fearing that migrant workers would undercut legal residents. However, labor's position has softened over the last decade in recognition of the glaring reality that as union membership has waned, the number and percentage of migrant workers in the economy has grown. For many union leaders, embracing, rather than shunning migrants seemed like a no-brainer.

Kaye goes on to explain how part of the latest amnesty bill includes a provision for a federal agency to determine the need for additional foreign labor, as if American workers didn't exist.
    The focus on labor is important since citizens are getting the shaft from Washington's legal immigration policy. As Gov. Dick Lamm has noted, "The United States has had zero net job growth since 2000, yet we have imported 10 million permanent immigrants in the same period."
    In addition, other major detriments to American society go unmentioned. They include social balkanization, bilingualism (i.e. Spanish everywhere), overuse of natural resources, national security threats, failing schools, increased crime, costs for building more infrastructure and the replacement of the independent values of Americans with the statism of most immigrant groups. What passes for debate on this subject is remarkably narrow these days.

•   •   •  

NYC's top cop Ray Kelly on decision to have terror trials in NY: We were not consulted   [1/24/10]
Obama-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed at your service, New York.

New York City's Police Commissioner Ray Kelly addressed the New York Young Republican Club on Thursday. Two hundred and fifty members of the organization were in attendance and mainly peppered the commissioner with questions regarding the upcoming 9/11 terror trials that are to be staged in lower Manhattan.
    When asked how the decision for the trials to be hosted in New York came about, Commisioner Kelly's response produced gasps among audience members (h/t Loud Citizen).:
"We were not consulted," Kelly said tersely of the decision. He stated that the trial "will raise the threat level of this city," a threat that "will not fade any time soon." And it affects more than lower Manhattan, we learned. "We will have to look at the entire city as a potential target."
Commissioner Kelly also hinted that the terror trials could potentially be scrapped. He mentioned a recent Newsweek piece by Michael Isikoff discussing this issue. Moreover, lower Manhattan's Community Board 1 may very well veto the idea of the trials being held in their neighborhood.

•   •   •  

Ban on burqas receives strong public support in France   [1/24/10]
France is moving in the right direction, though it has taken long enough.

A report drawn up by French MPs will this week call for a ban on Afghan-style burqas and other garments that cover a woman's face.
    The proposal has strong public support. According to an opinion poll by Ipsos for the magazine Le Point, 57% of voters favour a ban while 37% are opposed.
    The recommendations of a parliamentary commission, to be published on Tuesday, are expected to include a bar on wearing full veils on public transport and in schools, hospitals and public-sector offices including post offices. The commission is thought likely to call for a total ban after further consultation.
    President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a debate on veils last June, telling a special sitting of both houses of parliament that they were "not welcome" in France. He said last week the full veil was "contrary to our values and to the ideals we have of women's dignity". [...]
    Hassen Chalghoumi, a Tunisian-born imam in northern Paris, backed the proposed ban last week, saying full-face veils had no basis in Islam and "belong to a tiny minority tradition reflecting an ideology that scuttles the Muslim religion".
    "The burqa is a prison for women, a tool of sexist domination," he said.

In addition, the burqa is a swell disguise for both common criminals and Islo-terrorists. Daniel Pipes has a rather sizable list of miscreant cases, remarking "one cannot have faceless persons walking the streets, driving cars, or otherwise entering public spaces."

Below, a street scene in Marseille in the newly diversified France: "Is that a 9mm in your pocket or were you just shoplifting?"

•   •   •  

Feds Rush To Put Illegal Haitians To Work   [1/23/10]
Why is Washington giving away American jobs to lawbreakers, during a terrible jobs depression? The government has no right to hurt citizens in the process of helping Haitians.

•   •   •  

Editorial: Mexican migrants due for image makeover   [1/22/10]
In Dallas, the official Mexi-booster decided to pursue a contrarian marketing scheme by naming a few tiny defects in his countrymen's national character.

Mexico's new consul general in Dallas, Juan Carlos Cue-Vega, has an admirable and ambitious agenda for the estimated 400,000 to 500,000 Mexicans living in Dallas and other cities covered by his consular region. Cue-Vega says his compatriots here have a bad reputation, and it's time for an image makeover.
    With refreshing candor, he is blunt about the problem: "Frankly, we have spoken about the issues that make us not look very good, like celebrations using guns, littering, [being] noisy in the neighborhoods, leaving the kids at home while going to work. These are social and cultural things that we need to change."

Hey, just hire an image consultant to make citizens forget about the unpleasant invasion aspect and the inappropriate cultural fit. That'll work, for sure.
    Plus, Senor Cue-Vega's list of behavioral piggery was far from complete. He could have included Mexican men's sexual pursuit of under-age girls, an epidemic of lethal drunk driving, a massive school drop-out rate, animal cruelty, an acceptance of corruption and propensity for crime of all sorts.
    Oh, and 58 percent of Mexicans believe the American border means nada.

•   •   •  

California unemployment remains at 12.4 percent   [1/22/10]
More dreary jobless numbers are now in for December.

Imperial County in Southern California had the highest unemployment rate in the state at 27.7 percent. Marin County's rate was the lowest, at 7.8 percent.
    More than 2.2 million Californians were without work in December. The number does not include the nearly 500,000 workers who have taken low-paying or part-time jobs because that's all they could find, or the 115,000 people who have given up looking for work, according to the state.
    December capped off a dismal year where the state lost more than a half-million jobs. While most industries cut employment, there was one bright spot: Education and health care posted a 1.3 percent increase for the year.
    According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, California has the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the nation.
    Michigan tops the nation with 14.6 percent, followed by Nevada, Rhode Island and South Carolina. The nation's overall unemployment rate was unchanged in December at 10 percent.

In addition, Unemployment Rose In 43 States Last Month.

•   •   •  

Marc Thiessen on Hannity   [1/22/10]
The author of the new book "Courting Disaster" explains how the Obama administration has made bonehead national security decisions that endanger us all. Very informative and important.

•   •   •  

Man Claims Terror Ties in Little Rock Shooting   [1/22/10]
At a time when the Pentagon is doing a tapdance of denial about the jihadist motivation for the Fort Hood shootings, the Muslim who murdered a young soldier outside an Army recruiting station is insisting that he killed for Allah, as the Koran instructs.

MEMPHIS - A Tennessee man accused of killing a soldier outside a Little Rock, Ark., military recruiting station last year has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming for the first time that he is affiliated with a Yemen-based affiliate of Al Qaeda.
    In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, the accused killer, Abdulhakim Muhammad, calls himself a soldier in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and calls the shooting "a Jihadi Attack" in retribution for the killing of Muslims by American troops.
    "I wasn't insane or post traumatic nor was I forced to do this Act," Mr. Muhammad said in a two-page, hand-printed note in pencil. The attack, which he said did not go as planned, was "justified according to Islamic Laws and the Islamic Religion. Jihad - to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims."

You can read the accused shooter's letter admitting to Islamic jihad over at Jawa.

•   •   •  

A Dark Day for the Enlightenment   [1/22/10]
Author Bruce Bawer resides in Europe, and has written a couple of books about the threat of Islam to western civilization. As a writer, he is particularly attuned to the Islam/free speech issue there.Bawer emphasizes the threat to traditional free speech posed by the inappropriate response of the west to hostile Islam, typified by the trial of Geert Wilders for insulting Muslims, which has just begun in the Netherlands.

The charges are itemized. First, Wilders is charged with having "intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion." Second, with having "incited to hatred of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion." Third, with having "incited to discrimination . . . against people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion." Fourth, with having "incited to hatred of people, i.e. non-Western immigrants and/or Moroccans, based on their race." And fifth, with having "incited to discrimination . . . against people, i.e. non-Western immigrants and/or Moroccans, based on their race."
    Supporting these charges is a long list of statements from Wilders, many purely factual, others opinions that follow logically from those facts. Among them: "The demographic composition of the population is the biggest problem of the Netherlands" and "those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation." Absurdly, among the statements cited in support of the charges against Wilders are his direct quotations from the Koran in Fitna, such as "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them" and "Fight them until there is no dissension, and the religion is entirely Allah's." The summons also mentions footage shown in Fitna of imams preaching against unbelievers: "What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy if non-Muslims are being killed" and "Destroy the unbelievers and polytheists, your (Allah's) enemies and the enemies of the religion. Allah, count them and kill them up to the very last of them. And do not spare a single one."

Also worthwhile is the CBN reporting, Dutch Politician Facing Trial for Hate Speech.

Hundreds of Wilders' supporters demonstrated outside an Amsterdam court Wednesday at the start of his criminal trial for allegedly inciting hate against the Dutch Muslim minority. The Dutch are not given to overstatement, but one paper calls this the "Trial of the Century."
    It pits Wilders' right to free speech against European notions of political correctness, and also against Dutch Muslim fears of persecution.

•   •   •  

The Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?   [1/21/10]
How totally lame and PC is the Pentagon's report about the Fort Hood mass murders?
    So lame that even Time magazine noticed.

The U.S. military's just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission.
    John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 commission and Navy Secretary during the Reagan Administration, says a reluctance to cause offense by citing Hasan's view of his Muslim faith and the U.S. military's activities in Muslim countries as a possible trigger for his alleged rampage reflects a problem that has gotten worse in the 40 years that Lehman has spent in and around the U.S. military. The Pentagon report's silence on Islamic extremism "shows you how deeply entrenched the values of political correctness have become," he told TIME on Tuesday. "It's definitely getting worse, and is now so ingrained that people no longer smirk when it happens."

Robert Spencer commented similarly: Pentagon on Fort Hood: Jihad? What Jihad?.

Political correctness was responsible for the murders of thirteen people at Fort Hood. If it had not held the political and military establishments in a stranglehold, Nidal Hasan would never have remained in the U.S. military, much less risen to the rank of major. He would have been removed from the ranks long before he had had a chance to murder anyone at Fort Hood. Political correctness was responsible for the fear among his superior officers -- they knew that if they disciplined or removed Hasan, they would have faced charges of "discrimination" and "bigotry." And such charges can ruin careers these days.

I tried to watch the Fort Hood hearing on C-span yesterday, but the testimony was so abstract and dissociated from events that it hardly made sense. The Senators' questions were sensible, but Togo West and Admiral Vernon Clark were obtuse.

•   •   •  

Sen. Sessions Grills FBI Director Muller on Christmas Bomber   [1/21/10]
Inquiring minds want to know who gave the order that the Nigerian terrorist would immediately get all the rights of an American citizen.

•   •   •  

"Hate speech or Free speech? Geert Wilders on trial"   [1/20/10]
The trial of Dutch member of Parliament and free speech champion Geert Wilder began this week. The event is a disturbing marker of the devolution of Europe into Eurabia, because too many of the people would rather surrender to totalitarian Islam than defend their freedoms.

See also Geert Wilders' statement to the court, translated into English: Geert Wilders's speech at his trial today:

I would like to make use of my right to speak for a few minutes.
    Freedom is the most precious of all our attainments and the most vulnerable. People have devoted their lives to it and given their lives for it. Our freedom in this country is the outcome of centuries. It is the consequence of a history that knows no equal and has brought us to where we are now.
    I believe with all my heart and soul that the freedom in the Netherlands is threatened. That what our heritage is, what generations could only dream about, that this freedom is no longer a given, no longer self-evident.
    I devote my life to the defence of our freedom. I know what the risks are and I pay a price for it every day. I do not complain about it; it is my own decision. I see that as my duty and it is why I am standing here.
    I know that the words I use are sometimes harsh, but they are never rash. It is not my intention to spare the ideology of conquest and destruction, but I am not any more out to offend people. I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country because Islam is at odds with freedom.
    Future generations will wonder to themselves how we in 2010, in this place, in this room, earned our most precious attainment. Whether there is freedom in this debate for both parties and thus also for the critics of Islam, or that only one side of the discussion may be heard in the Netherlands? Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone or only to a few? The answer to this is at once the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country.

•   •   •  

Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Massachusetts Senate Seat   [1/20/10]
Let the jokes and send-ups begin!

•   •   •  

Massachusetts vote: Scott Brown's victory speech in full   [1/20/10]
So far, so good. There's a lot to like about Senator-elect Brown, particularly the following snip from his victory speech.

I will work in the Senate to defend our nation's interests and to keep our military second to none. As a lieutenant colonel and 30-year member of the Army National Guard, I will keep faith with all who serve, and get our veterans all the benefits they deserve.
    And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation - they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.
    Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country. What I've heard again and again on the campaign trail, is that our political leaders have grown aloof from the people, impatient with dissent, and comfortable in the back room making deals. And we can do better.

Have Donks and the President heard the message yet that we citizens are sick to death of arrogant Washington suits deciding what is good for us?

Brown's campaign website defines issues:

Immigration
I recognize that our strength as a nation is built on the immigrant experience in America. I welcome legal immigration to this country. However, we are also a nation of laws and government should not adopt policies that encourage illegal immigration. Providing driverÕs licenses and in-state tuition to illegal immigrant families will act as a magnet in drawing more people here in violation of the law and it will impose new costs on taxpayers. I oppose amnesty, and I believe we ought to strengthen our border enforcement and institute an employment verification system with penalties for companies that hire illegal immigrants.

Gun issues
I support the Second Amendment and believe that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms as a basic constitutional liberty. I support safe and responsible gun ownership.

•   •   •  

GOP rep.: Ft. Hood report 'sanitized'   [1/19/10]
More objections about the politically correct Pentagon report about the jihadist killer Hasan.

The Pentagon's 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was "sanitized" to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday.
    The report, released last week, says that the Army's middle management missed signals about Nidal Malik Hasan in the months leading up to the mass shooting.
    But missing from the report is any discussion of what Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said was the a "crisis" with Islamic terrorism. Hasan allegedly wore ritual Muslim garb shouted "God is great" in Arabic when opening fire on a group of soldiers on the base - facts Carter said should have been disclosed in the report to help soldiers identify such signs in the future.
    A search of the report does not turn up any mentions of Islam.

More details about how Hasan was not held accountable by his superiors: Hasan's med training was troubled.

Often teetering on failure during his medical training, Nidal Hasan hit a particularly rough patch in 2007 when his Army superior cited him for unprofessional behavior, inappropriately discussing religion, underperforming in his residency program and being too fat.
    Yet the same supervisor who meticulously catalogued Hasan's problems suddenly swept them under the rug when graduation arrived that year for the man now charged in the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, government documents show.
    Hasan, then a captain, was rated "Outstanding Performance, Must Promote" by that supervisor, Maj. Scott Moran, and as "Best Qualified" by another, Col. John Bradley, shortly after he barely escaped the punishment of administrative probation.

It's good to see some names at last.

•   •   •  

Lake Worth area crackdown targets those who rob immigrants   [1/18/10]
Behold: your tax dollars at work, under the diversity-friendly Obama Justice Department. A big chunk of cash -- half a million dollars -- has been awarded to a Florida county sheriff department to protect illegal aliens from predatory citizens.
    Oh, the horror, for poor aliens who came to America for a better life, but get their cash pinched by the cruel locals.

Criminals often target Guatemalans and other immigrants because they tend to carry cash and have traditionally been reluctant to report crimes.
    The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office hopes to change that.
    The sheriff's office recently won a two-year, $500,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department that will be used to educate the city's immigrants about crime and more vigorously prosecute gang members and other criminals who prey on them.
    "The suspects know if they wait it out long enough the victims won't show up for the prosecution," said Capt. Rolando Silva, commander of the sheriff's District 14 office, which covers Lake Worth. "It's a huge injustice."
    By March, the sheriff's office plans to hire a community liaison, a non-uniformed, bilingual civilian who will be charged with reaching out to the city's undocumented immigrants - those who might be reluctant to talk to uniformed deputies for fear of deportation.

That's right, a police department can't do proper outreach to illegal foreigners without a non-threatening bilingual specialist with cultural competence for Guatemalans.

Immigrants also tend to engage in behaviors that make them easy targets.
    Some linger on street corners looking for work. They also spend time socializing on the streets in small groups at night.

Getting blotto drunk makes for an easy mark, also.

The sheriff's office liaison is expected to teach immigrants how to avoid becoming victims and that they can report crimes in several languages without fear of being deported.

•   •   •  

Thousands protest sheriff's immigration efforts   [1/17/10]
A sizable gaggle of illegal aliens and their lefty pals gathered on Saturday to protest the competent immigration enforcement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County. You might think that a wise strategy would have been the sob-story appeal with lots of tearful kiddies that Mexes use so frequently.
    Instead, some paraders were decked out in Aztec drag -- not the most friendly message, although no human sacrifices were performed that we know of.
    Do the protesters pictured below look like immigrants or invaders?

Phoenix police said Saturday night that five people were arrested during the protest and taken to Maricopa County Jail. Three were booked for aggravated assault on police; another was booked for aggravated assault on police and disorderly conduct. The fifth was booked for disorderly conduct and aggravated assault on police.
    Though the scene of the disturbance was cleared within minutes, the aftermath was chaotic. Protesters yelled obscenities at police officers in riot gear. One officer shook his pepper spray canister as he ordered people to keep moving. One protester wore goggles, and several others wrapped bandanas around their mouths.
    Critics have accused deputies working in Arpaio's immigration efforts of racial profiling, which the sheriff denies. He says his deputies approach people when they have probable cause to believe they had committed crimes.

•   •   •  

Hood massacre report gutless and shameful   [1/16/10]
Military analyst Ralph Peters has nothing good to say about the Pentagon's report on the Fort Hood terror attack, to put it mildly. In fact, he sounds furious.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It's so inept, it doesn't even rise to cover-up level.
    Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat "the alleged perpetrator," Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they're still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).
    The report is so politically correct that its authors don't even realize the extent of their political correctness -- they're body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian. [...]
    Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn't stop Hasan's career in its tracks.
    The answer is straightforward: Hasan's superiors feared -- correctly -- that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.
    Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today's armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.
    This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain't many colonels willing to hammer the Army's sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.
    Of course, there's no mention of political correctness by the panel. Instead, the report settles for blinding flashes of the obvious, such as "We believe a gap exists in providing information to the right people." Gee, really? Well, that explains everything. Money well spent!
    Or "Department of Defense force protection policies are not optimized for countering internal threats." Of course not: You can't stop an internal threat you refuse to recognize.

It's disturbing to see the extent of political correctness at the highest level of the military. Shortly after the Fort Hood attack, General George Casey opined, "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." Now we see that he was not off the reservation, as far as dogma, from the rest of the Pentagon: diversity ideology has replaced protecting the country as the prime directive.
    And if the military is too PC to protect its own people, how can we mere citizens think that it will keep us secure?

Col Peters appeared on Fox News to condemn the Armny's political correctness: This Is A Whitewash! Ralph Peters On Pentagon Report On Fort Hood Shooting.

•   •   •  

The Underlying Tragedy   [1/15/10]
Columnist David Brooks tackled some tough questions in why large-scale do-goodery often fails when countries like America try to help disaster states like Haiti get their act together.
    Going to culture analyst Lawrence Harrison for guidance is always a good idea.

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth - with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.
    As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book "The Central Liberal Truth," Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
    We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Prof. Harrison's chart of progress-prone vs. progress-resistant culture contains a lot of wisdom. (Larger image here.)

   

•   •   •  

Coakley Admits She "Looked the Other Way" on Immigration Law   [1/15/10]
Memorable quote from Massachusetts Senatorial candidate Coakley, "We are always going to have open borders."

Excerpt from an interview with Mindy Todd of WGBH-Boston on Nov. 17, 2009...

•   •   •  

Lake Co. sheriff: Arrest shows 'devastation' of illegal immigrant crime   [1/15/10]
You don't see headlines that the one above very often. The sheriff is correct that the ripoff from identity theft creates a huge burden for the victims.

Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran said the recent arrest of a Franklin Park man is another example of the havoc wrought by illegal aliens who commit crimes.
    Sergio Uscanga, 26, is charged with identity theft and forgery for using the financial information of a Lake Villa Township man to work for four years.
    Curran said Uscanga, who entered this country from Mexico, purchased the name and Social Security number of the 39-year-old victim.
    Uscanga used the information to apply for a job at Banner Service Co. in Carpentersville, Curran said, and was hired Sept. 12, 2005.
    This past December, Curran said, the victim received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service saying he owed taxes on the wages he had been paid from the job.
    The man called police, and Curran said sheriff's detectives tracked down Uscanga and arrested him Sunday morning.
    "This case is another example of the devastation criminals who are in this country illegally can cause," Curran said. "This victim will now have to spend months getting his credit straightened out and dealing with an IRS bill he does not owe."
    Curran, who has repeatedly called for harsh punishment and expedited deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes, said it is estimated up to 50 percent of people in this country illegally have stolen identity information.

•   •   •  

Lawmakers urge improved defenses against extremism   [1/14/10]
Senators Lieberman and Collins, who head up the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, have essentially condemned the political correctness that has been hamstringing the military's protection of the troops.

A Senate committee on Wednesday urged the Defense Department to take firmer steps to combat the threat of Islamic extremism within the ranks, calling the current procedures inadequate for heading off possible attacks.
    The recommendations by leaders of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee come as the Pentagon is preparing to release an internal review of the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead. That review, directed by two former senior defense officials, will propose ways to improve the military's ability to identify service members who may be a danger to others and quicken reaction times by emergency response teams.
    Led by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, the committee's investigation of the Fort Hood has focused on whether the military missed numerous signs the accused shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, had embraced a radical view of Islam.
    In a Jan. 13 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Lieberman, along with Sen. Susan Collins, the committee's top Republican, contend the threat of "homegrown terrorism" inspired by violent Islamic extremism is growing and the military isn't exempt.
    As a result, the Defense Department's existing policies for dealing with personnel that become involved in gangs and racist groups need to be expanded to cover new avenues of violence, Lieberman and Collins say. Not only will that head off future attacks, it will protect Muslim-Americans in the military from suspicion, they said.

The Senators' letter can be read at the Maine Public Broadcasting site: Collins Recommends Ban on "Violent Islamist Extremism" in Military.

•   •   •  

DWI killer of mother, daughter gets maximum sentence   [1/14/10]
On June 8, Lori Donohue and her 8-year-old daughter Kayla were hit and killed as they left the girl's dance class by a drunk-driving illegal alien (see New York State Mother and Daughter Struck Down by Illegal Alien).
    The killer was sentenced recently to the maximum allowable, after victim statements by Lori's husband Robert (pictured here) and her father, John Luhrs. However, 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison does not seem like an adequate punishment for causing the deaths of two people.

An illegal immigrant who was driving with no license and a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit when he plowed into and killed a Southeast mother and daughter received the maximum sentence Wednesday of 8 1/3 to 25 years in state prison.
    Conses Garcia-Zacarias, 35, who has been held in the Putnam County jail since the June 8 fatalities, pleaded guilty in November to two counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of Lori Donohue, 37, and her 8-year-old daughter, Kayla. The second-grader and her mother were leaving the girl's dance class at Seven Stars School of Performing Arts in Brewster when Garcia-Zacarias struck them with a pickup truck.
    The act instantly took away half of the Donohue family, leaving Robert Donohue and his 5-year-old son, Christopher, grieving for the wife and mother, sister and daughter they lost.
    "Explaining to my 5-year-old son that he can never hug or kiss his mother and sister was the most difficult thing I've ever done," Donohue told the court Thursday.
    Donohue was accompanied in Putnam County Court by more than two dozen friends and family members who took up four of the six rows in the courtroom.
    Lori Donohue's father, John Luhrs, 70, of Bethel, Conn., also gave a victim-impact statement. He placed photos of his daughter and granddaughter on the prosecutor's table before looking up at Putnam County Judge James Rooney and saying, "Your Honor: A parent's worst nightmare."

You can watch the victim's statements of Lori's father and her husband Robert in the video below.

Finally, there is a remembrance website, LoriandKayla.org.

•   •   •  

Dutch lawmaker tries to avoid hate speech charges   [1/13/10]
Back in the 1930s, when Winston Churchill warned of the threat from Hitler, he was disparaged by some as alarmist, but no one suggested that he should be locked up for damaging the self-esteem of the Nazis.
    Today's liberal society, however, demands punishment for those who voice unpopular opinion, e.g. the idea that not all diversity is equal, particularly the hostile Islamic variety. Elites insist that the west bend over backwards to protect the delicate feelings of Muslims, whose religion demands death for homosexuality, apostasy and adultery.
    Free speech is increasingly weakened as speaking ill of Islam is rapidly becoming a crime under European "hate speech" laws. Interestingly the Koran itself is full of admonitions to kill any and all non-Muslims and would be recognized as a document containing hate speech in any honest analysis.
    In fact, Geert Wilders' brief documentary film Fitna merely quoted and illustrated the Koran. For that defense of western civilization and exercise of free speech, Wilders now faces jail in the Netherlands.

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders asked judges on Wednesday to drop or reduce charges against him of criminal incitement, arguing that his anti-Islam message falls within the boundaries of freedom of speech.
    Wilders, one of the country's most popular politicians, is due to go on trial in March for allegedly insulting Muslims as a group and inciting hatred and discrimination against them.
    After the closed pretrial hearing at Amsterdam District Court, Wilders said the session was "the first day of a political trial."
    Charges against Wilders stem from his 2008 short film "Fitna," which offended many Muslims by juxtaposing Quranic verses against images of terrorism by Islamic radicals.

Below is clip of the first eight minutes of Fitna.

Geert Wilders has warned America that Islam's fanaticism threatens free people everywhere. In the talk below he quotes Mohammed: "I have been ordered by Allah to fight against people until they testify that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger." Europe's welcome of Muslim immigration looks more and more like a fatal mistake.

•   •   •  

Congressman seeking to bar Iranians from US   [1/12/10]
The above headline is from an Iranian news service, and they are most interested in how US policy effects them. In fact, Rep. J. Gresham Barrett would like to keep out citizens from other unfriendly countries as well.
    What's odd is that Iranians can travel here at all. There are no diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, yet Iranians visit the US at will? How does that work? Even more curious is the diversity visa program, which always has a big slice for Iranians (e.g. 2,773 in 2010), despite the fact that Iran is a self-declared enemy os America. Nothing has changed since the Iranian occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran in the late 1970s.
    There's hardly a week that goes by without President Ahmadinejad threatening somebody. He has blamed this country for the protests in Iran -- like Iranians aren't sentient adults.
    Anyway, America has a right to regulate who enters the country, and a whole lot more regulating is indicated.

A US congressman has announced his plans to reintroduce the Stop Terrorists Entry Program (STEP) Act into Congress, which calls for the deportation of most Iranians without permanent resident status.
    The STEP Act, a bill that was originally presented in 2003, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar citizens of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States.
    Rep. J. Gresham Barrett says he is reintroducing the STEP Act in response to the Fort Hood shooting, carried out by a US citizen, and the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit, attempted by a Nigerian national.
    If passed, the bill would deport all Iranians on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange visas, and tourist visas from the United States within 60 days.

Rep. Barrett's January 5 press release has more background:

The State Department has indentified the following states as sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Given recent reports of increased levels of terrorist activities in Yemen, Congressman Barrett has requested that its citizens not be allowed to enter the United States.

•   •   •  

The diversity visa lottery must go   [1/12/10]
Roger Hedgecock has some compelling statistics about why the diversity visa is a national security threat. The diversity visa lottery picks 50,000 names out of a hat every year from countries deemed insufficiently represented in America's immigrant cohort. The idea is that America will be improved by still more diversity (!)

Among the legacy-of-Ted-Kennedy laws that plague this country is one that guarantees the legal immigration of terrorists to the U.S. It's called the "Diversity Visa Lottery" or "Green Card Lottery." You must make this abomination a priority for repeal in Congress. [...]
    For 2010, 13.8 million people from eligible countries entered the lottery, and 102,800 were chosen by lottery to apply for the 50,000 visas available for 2010.
    In 2010, 72 citizens of Yemen are "winners" and will immigrate legally to the U.S. More than 1,000 Yemenis have been "winners" since 2001.
    In 2010, the 72 Yemenis will be joined by 2,773 Iranians, 4,201 Egyptians, 343 Afghanis, 98 Syrians, 229 Somalis, and (amazingly) three North Koreans! They are all legal migrants to the U.S.
    Are these "winners" checked against the various "terror watch lists"? Are they graduates of Gitmo? Are any "dots" connected in this program? No one knows - at least no one will say.

The only requirement to be eligible for the drawing is a high-school diploma (or equivalent) or two years of work experience. The winners are awarded a direct and rapid path to American citizenship. What could possibly go wrong?
    Maybe welcoming terrorists??
    One indication is that over a dozen countries getting diversity visas are on the TSA watch list for increased screening at airports, noted in the map below:

Incidentally these problems have been recognized for years (e.g. see my article from 2004, Time to Dump the Diversity Visa); they are just more outrageous now given the increased hostile activity by jihadists. The GAO noted in 2007 that nearly 10,000 visas had been awarded to citizens of state sponsors of terror, as noted in my blog from that year, GAO Notes Open Doors for Terrorist Diversity.
    (See the original GAO report: Fraud Risks Complicate State's Ability to Manage Diversity Visa Program)
    Finally, Congressman Bob Goodlatte has submitted legislation on several occasions to end the idiotic program. This Tube (visa lottery- a threat to our nations security), dated May 5, 2009, is a good explainer.

•   •   •  

TB a top priority for public health leaders   [1/11/10]
San Francisco has a full plate of sanctuary-connected problems, and one is the increased threat to public health because of putting out the welcome mat for illegal aliens from around the world. One result is having more than three times the national rate of tuberculosis.
    Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection which is passed through the air, so the crowded conditions common to illegal aliens are a perfect breeding ground for more cases to develop. Plus nearly a third of San Francisco residents are Chinese, and China is home to above-average rates of drug-resistant TB.

About 100 cases of multi-drug resistant TB - and two to four cases of extensively drug resistant TB - show up in the United States each year. San Francisco usually sees one to four multi-drug resistant cases of TB a year. The city has seen one case of extensively drug-resistant TB. That patient was diagnosed in 2005 and it took three years to cure him.
    San Francisco gets about 120 cases of TB each year. That's about 14.6 cases per 100,000 people, which is twice the statewide rate and more than three times the national rate of 4.2 cases per 100,000. It's also the highest rate in the Bay Area, although several counties are also higher than the state and national averages.
    The reason for the high rate of disease in San Francisco is because of the city's large foreign-born population. Most people who get TB were infected outside the United States, including countries where the disease is much more prevalent.

The issue of drug-resistant TB is explained in more detail in a December article, First case of highly drug-resistant TB found in US.

"Drug resistance is starting to be a very big problem. In the past, people stopped worrying about TB and it came roaring back. We need to make sure that doesn't happen again," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was himself infected with tuberculosis while caring for drug-resistant patients at a New York clinic in the early '90s. "We are all connected by the air we breathe, and that is why this must be everyone's problem."

The main reason for the re-emergence of infectious diseases once thought conquered has been the misuse of antibiotics, which has allowed drug-resistant mutations to develop. It also doesn't help when people with communicable disease are not kept out at the border.

•   •   •  

In Hasan case, superiors ignored their own worries   [1/11/10]
Politically correct superiors in the US Army let an obviously incompetent doctor advance in rank because no one wanted to speak ill of a Muslim.
    You might think the Army would put the safety and well-being of its soldiers as its top priority, but not so much, as it turns out. The Army was busy celebrating diversity instead of requiring competence. Thirteen people are dead as a result.

A Defense Department review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, has found the doctors overseeing Maj. Nidal Hasan's medical training repeatedly voiced concerns over his strident views on Islam and his inappropriate behavior, yet continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks.
    The picture emerging from the review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one of supervisors who failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist, according to information gathered during the internal Pentagon investigation and obtained by The Associated Press. The review has not been publicly released.
    Hasan, 39, is accused of murdering 13 people on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, the worst killing spree on a U.S. military base.
    What remains unclear is why Hasan would be advanced in spite of all the worries over his competence. That is likely to be the subject of a more detailed accounting by the department. Recent statistics show the Army rarely blocks junior officers from promotion, especially in the medical corps.
    In telling episodes from the latter stages of Hasan's lengthy medical education in the Washington, D.C., area, he gave a class presentation questioning whether the U.S.-led war on terror was actually a war on Islam. And fellow students said he suggested that Shariah (shah-REE'-yuh), or Islamic law, trumped the Constitution and he attempted to justify suicide bombings.
    Yet no one in Hasan's chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. Had they, Hasan's fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.

The Hasan case was in the back of my mind when I questioned whether the 1500 Muslim officers in the New York Police Department were properly screened (New York Celebrates Diversity in its Police Department). We are all threatened by the secular enshrinement of diversity as the highest virtue by the liberal elite, and its enforcement device, political correctness.

•   •   •  

Myleene Klass warned by police after scaring off intruders with knife   [1/11/10]
Last year I wrote about the UK's nutty campaign against "the scourge of knife crime" (As Immigrant Crime Rises In Britain, The UK Government Is Trying To Ban Not Guns, But Knives). Because after the government had removed firearms from the hands of the citizens, violent crime did not miraculously disappear, so now knives are targeted by the nanny state. And in today's Britain, normal self-defense by law-abiding citizens against criminals is not permitted.
    In the current item, a woman attempting to protect her home and toddler by brandishing a knife against some threatening young males was told by police that she acted illegally.

Miss Klass, a model for Marks & Spencer and a former singer with the pop group Hear'Say, was in her kitchen in the early hours of Friday when she saw two teenagers behaving suspiciously in her garden.
    The youths approached the kitchen window, before attempting to break into her garden shed, prompting Miss Klass to wave a kitchen knife to scare them away.
    Miss Klass, 31, who was alone in her house in Potters Bar, Herts, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, called the police. When they arrived at her house they informed her that she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an "offensive weapon" Ð even in her own home Ð was illegal.

What kind of psychotic liberalism is so in love with criminals and pacificism that it denies the basic right of self-defense in a person's own home?

•   •   •  

Willie's World   [1/10/10]
San Francisco's former mayor Wille Brown writes a semi-regular column for the Chronicle on Sundays, mostly chatting about political gossip and deluxe parties he has attended. Below is an item from today.

You think San Francisco is diverse? We've got nothing compared to New York.
    Chinatown powerhouse Rose Pak told me over lunch at North Beach restaurant that she was in New York the other day, took a mile-and-a-half walk down Fifth Avenue and heard just two people speaking English.

•   •   •  

David Cameron: net immigration will be capped at tens of thousands   [1/10/10]
In the UK, the conservative candidate for Prime Minister in the upcoming election, David Cameron, is talking about numerical limits for immigration. Naming specific numbers of immigrants at all is something of a breakthrough for a western politician near a top leadership position.

Saying he opposed a rise in immigration which would take the population above 70 million, Mr Cameron said that limits needed to be imposed to ensure public services did not become overwhelmed.
    He said: "In a country like Britain you're going to have large numbers of people going and living abroad every year and working abroad, and also large numbers of people coming in. It seems to me what matters É is the net figure.
    "In the last decade, net immigration in some years has been sort of 200,000, so implying a 2 million increase over a decade, which I think is too much. [...]
    Reducing immigration to levels seen under the last Conservative government would mean around 50,000 more arrivals than departures a year.
    In recent years, the Tories have shied away from putting the issue of immigration at the centre of the party's election campaigning, for fear of appearing as the "nasty party".
    But Conservative chiefs are said to feel that voters are now keen to hear more about limiting the numbers arriving from overseas.

Britain is a tiny place and is rapidly becoming impossibly overcrowded due to immigration: British population to pass 70 million, forecasts Migrationwatch.

Official forecasts predict the population, currently at around 61 million, will pass the landmark figure by 2028 and around 70 per cent of that will be due to immigration.
    Last year, Karen Dunnell, the National Statistician, said net immigration would have to be cut by 80 per cent if the Government wants to keep the population below 70 million - thought to be a sustainable level.

And while the numbers alone indicate a severe curtailment of immigration, the unfriendly nature of one immigrant group in Britain also demands less of a bad thing: Britons are suspicious towards Muslims, study finds.

More than half the population would be strongly opposed to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, the study found.
    A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.

•   •   •  

Mukasey's Take on Terror Trial   [1/09/10]
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey appeared on Fox News on Saturday and described the many problems with the current administration's legalist approach to terror. He was particularly appalled that Obama wants to do plea bargains with terrorists, rather than gather intelligence as the first priority.
    One disturbing possibility Mukasey mentioned is that Gitmo terrorists transferred to Illinois might later be released into this country after a successful habeas petition if no foreign country would be willing to take them. This dangerous future is the result when the government gives citizen rights to foreign enemy combatants. Our national security should not be in the hands of judges or the ACLU.

For more, see Michael Mukasey's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, What Does the Detroit Bomber Know?.

Had Abdulmutallab been turned over immediately to interrogators intent on gathering intelligence, valuable facts could have been gathered and perhaps acted upon. Indeed, a White House spokesman has confirmed that Abdulmutallab did disclose some actionable intelligence before he fell silent on advice of counsel. Nor is it any comfort to be told, as we were, by the senior intelligence adviser referred to above -- he of the "no smoking gun" -- that we can learn facts from Abdulmutallab as part of a plea bargaining process in connection with his prosecution.
    Whatever that official thinks he knows about the plea bargaining process, he certainly should know that the kind of facts that Abdulmutallab might be expected to know have a shelf life that is a lot shorter than the plea bargaining process, assuming such a process ever gets started.

Mukasey was a serious public servant in a position that has become more and more politicized (from Bush's Mexophilic pal Alberto Gonzalez to Obama's creature of the far left Eric Holder). When new on the job of Attorney General, Mukasey spoke honestly about his first briefings about national security threats, describing them as "way beyond anything that I knew or believed."

•   •   •  

An open door for migrants to work on Olympics (while 20,000 British builders are laid off)   [1/09/10]
The London Olympics doesn't occur until 2012, yet British elites already intend to screw the many unemployed homegrown workers.
    It's all too familiar...

A scheme to relax immigration laws to allow tens of thousands of unskilled workers to enter the country to build Olympic sites is being drawn up for ministers.
    Migrant workers may be needed to complete the stadiums for the 2012 Games and also to work on separate engineering projects, Government advisers believe.
    But the prospect of a new wave of immigration for construction schemes - at a time when the recession has seen nearly 200,000 construction workers laid off in the past year - provoked furious protests last night. [...]
    Latest unemployment figures show that 187,000 jobs have been lost in construction in the past year as unemployment hit nearly 2.5million.
    There are 70,000 unemployed adults in the seven East London boroughs closest to the Olympic sites.
    Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch, said: 'Has anybody told the Government's advisers we have unemployment of 2.5million and a serious skills shortage which people need to be trained to fill?
    'Permitting employers to recruit immigrant labour off the shelf can only reduce the prospects for British workers.'

•   •   •  

Police warn of terrorism threat behind illegal immigrant issue   [1/09/10]
The good news: police understand the danger of terrorists entering through open borders. The bad news: the cops are in Indonesia.

The National Police has found early indications that might link the current influx of foreign immigrants, who enter this country illegally, with terrorism, chief detective Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi said Tuesday.
    "We received early intelligence information that shows these immigrants might be followed by those who share a relationship with some terrorist organizations," Ito said.
    "As of now, I have to acknowledge we are still in the dark about the backgrounds of these immigrants, especially those from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka," he said.

•   •   •  

Italy hit by race riots after immigrants shot and wounded   [1/08/10]
Here's another sad example of why the whole diversity-is-the-highest-good thing is total BS. Human beings are hard-wired to prefer the company of their own tribe, and happy-talk gibberish to the contrary doesn't work. As sociologist Robert Putnam has observed, "Diversity decreases trust."
    This recent conflict took place in Italy, started by a couple of local kids shooting some Africans (most foreign workers are illegal, it appears) with air rifles. Rioting has followed for a couple days. Such is the effect of multicultural immigration. Despite decades of pro-diversity propaganda in Europe and America, human nature remains the same as it ever was.

Immigrants in southern Italy clashed with police after they were attacked by white Italian youths with air guns.
    Dozens took to the street in the town of Rosarno, Calabria, smashing car windows and setting fire to vehicles and trash cans.
    Police said that a car was attacked while passengers were inside and several people were injured. A total of 32 people, including 18 policemen, were injured in the rioting which began on Thursday.

The video here is interesting because it has some local reaction.

The Daily Mail has some interesting photos in its story, Immigrant riot in Italy leaves 37 injured after series of beatings by white youths.

Authorities reporting at least 37 were wounded in the ensuing clashes, including 18 police officers and five migrants, as the violence reached its second day in the coastal town of Rosarno in Calabria.

Below, an African man argued with an Italian woman during the conflict.

Illegal alien Africans tore up the town of Rosarno in their two days of rioting.

•   •   •  

Liberian teen charged in rape released to parents   [1/08/10]
In July, four Liberian boys aged 9-14 allegedly gang raped an eight-year-old Liberian girl after luring her with the promise of chewing gum. The oldest boy was arraigned in August.

A 13-year-old Liberian boy charged in the reported gang-rape of an 8-year-old girl in Phoenix was released from custody Thursday and turned over to his parents as he continues lessons designed to make him competent to stand trial.
    The boy, whom The Associated Press is not naming because of his age, has made progress in his lessons to understand the charges against him and how the justice system works, Maricopa County juvenile Judge Shellie Smith said in court.
    The teen sat shackled in the courtroom and said only, "I want to go home."
    His parents sat by his side.
    "I want my son home," said his father. "We can keep our eyes on him."

Right, the parents have done such a swell job of raising him so far.
    As a footnote, keep in mind that even New York Times liberal Nicholas Kristoff says that gang rape has become pretty normal in Liberia: After Wars, Mass Rapes Persist.
    Another indicator of Liberian society's attitude toward women: individual rape was legal until 2006. (Only gang rape was illegal up to that point.)

•   •   •  

Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs Discuss Immigration Reform - 01/07/10   [1/07/10]
This is sickening. Two pseudo-conservatives arguing over how massive an amnesty should be enacted. No mention of 15 million unemployed citizens, no mention that the voters don't want an amnesty in this economy, no mention of the psychological effect of rewarding lawbreakers and how deleterious it would be for American law and sovereignty.

How quickly memories fade. In 2007, Lou Dobbs interviewed Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation about the taxpayer burden within that year's amnesty bill: Robert Rector on the Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants.

See also Rector's paper from 2007, Amnesty Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers at Least $2.6 Trillion.

Also of interest is Robert Rector's 6/23/07 appearance on C-Span's Washington Journal show which is 35 minutes in length: Economic Impact of Immigration.

•   •   •  

Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda   [1/07/10]
Diversity ideology posits that all cultures are morally equal. Its continued credibility depends upon a constant stream of media puff pieces in favor of multiculturalism, while ignoring the shadow side of human nature. Occasionally, elite media (the BBC in this case) investigate rough societies in the third world, and always seem surprised at the horrors they find.

A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged.
    One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits.
    Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son.
    The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase, and according to the head of the country's Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce the crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.

Oops, that last item refutes the widely held idea that rising prosperity is altogether positive. Perhaps not entirely.

The normal horror of witchcraft practicioners is unimaginable.

Former witch-doctor turned anti-sacrifice campaigner Polino Angela says he has persuaded 2,400 other witch-doctors to give up the trade since he himself repented in 1990.
    Mr Angela told us he had first been initiated as a witch-doctor at a ceremony in neighbouring Kenya, where a boy of about 13 was sacrificed.
    "The child was cut with a knife on the neck and the entire length from the neck down was ripped open, and then the open part was put on me," he said.

Below, the genitals of three-year-old Mukisa were hacked off to be used in witchcraft. His parents are concerned with what kind of life he will have.

The BBC also includes a slideshow: In pictures: Child sacrifice in Uganda.

•   •   •  

SAUDI ARABIA: 'Polygamy for women' article sparks public row in Egypt, Muslim world   [1/07/10]
In America, we have a saying, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" meaning that there should not be different standards for men and women. Apparently there is no parallel aphorism in dar al-Islam, judging by a recent controversy where a Muslim woman suggested that her gender should be able to enjoy multiple marriage partners like men do.

"Allow me to choose four, five or even nine men, just as my wildest imagination shall choose. I'll pick them with different shapes and sizes, one of them will be dark and the other will be blond. ... [T]hey will be chosen from different backgrounds, religions, races and nations."
    So reads the first paragraph of Saudi journalist Nadine Bedair's controversial article,Êrecently published in the Egyptian independent daily Al Masry Al Youm, that raised the question of why only men are allowed to practice polygamy in Islam but not women.
    As expected, the daring article, entitled "My Four Husbands and I," has stirred the pot among various groups.
    Comments and criticism on the article continue to trickle in at a steady pace nearly a month after its publication, especially in Egypt, from where it originated. There, some Muslim authorities and lawmakers have attacked Bedair, condemning her writings as inflammatory and sexually provocative.
    One of those who reacted with fury to her reflections on the alleged unfairness of polygamy in Islam was Sheikh Mohamed Gama'i. He lashed out at the Saudi journalist in an article published on an Egyptian news site, saying that "no woman has the right to attack our traditions in this manner" and said that Bedair ought to be "stopped."

Islam has no tradition of or respect for free speech (as has been underlined in the recent attack on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard). Furthermore, the idea that a mere woman would criticize Islam at all infuriates many Muslim males. Their societies may be human cesspools of corruption, but men still rule as autocrats over women in countries like Saudi Arabia, so they like gender inequality just fine.

•   •   •  

'I fear for my grandchildren' says former Archbishop of Canterbury, as he calls for Christian values to be defended   [1/07/10]
Another nervous voice from the UK warning about a Muslified future...

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey yesterday warned that Britain will be in Ôdeep troubleÕ if it does not cut immigration and stand up for its Christian values.
    He called for a dramatic reduction in migrant numbers and insisted those who want to enter the UK should be made to understand its Christian heritage.
    Lord Carey said: ÔWe Christians are very often so soft that we allow other people to walk over us and we are not as tough in what we want, in expressing our beliefs, because we do not want to upset other people.Õ

Similarly, the poet Robert Frost once described a liberal as a "man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." It's not a good quality to have when facing political Islam.

•   •   •  

Driver who caused retired postman's death in Walker is sent to prison   [1/06/10]
In December, I reported on the preventable death of Leonard Dykstra (pictured), a Michigan grandfather who was killed after dinner with his family by a drunk-driving illegal alien. His killer was sentenced recently according to the wishes of his son.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Months after 80-year-old Leonard Dykstra was killed in a drunken driving crash, his son Brian Dykstra asked a judge to sentence the culprit, Efrain Garcia-Miron, to five years in prison.
    That's just what Kent County Circuit Judge Paul Sullivan did Tuesday, sentencing the 33-year-old illegal immigrant to between five and 15 years in prison for drunken driving causing the death of Dykstra, a retired postman.
    After serving his prison term, Garcia-Miron will be deported to Mexico.

•   •   •  

Police May Scrap Entrance Exam: Report   [1/06/10]
Chicago has a history of creativity in avoiding responsibility, so today's item is not too surprising. The strategy is clearly designed to end the clash between diversity and competence by removing the standards that define fitness.
    Problem solved -- Chicago style!

The Chicago Police Department is seriously considering scrapping the police entrance exam, sources tell Fran Spielman.
    Dropping the exam would bolster minority hiring and avert legal battles, according to one source, while others confirm that the exam could be scrapped to open the process to as many people as possible.
    However, the lack of an exam would make Chicago the lone major city without one, and experts contend that the exam is integral to eliminating unqualified applicants.
    The CPD has tried in recent years to boost minority hiring by offering the police exam online and turning to minority clergy to help in the recruitment effort.
    But those efforts have met with frustration. Despite seeing an increase in the number of minority applicants in 2006, the last year the exam was offered, the online component was never launched.
    And as of last year, one in four patrol officers were African-American, but just one in 12 Lieutenants were of color.

Floating in the background is the Supreme Court decision from last June in favor of fair testing: High court backs firefighters in reverse discrimination suit.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided Monday with white firefighters in a workplace discrimination lawsuit, a divisive case over the role race should play in job advancement.
    In the split 5-4 vote, a majority of the justices ruled that the city of New Haven, Connecticut, improperly threw out the results of promotional exams that officials said left too few minorities qualified.

•   •   •  

Father Bascio on the immorality of illegal immigration   [1/06/10]
In this clip, the author of On The Immorality of Illegal Immigration explains how a visit to his old parish in Harlem reversed his opinion of open borders. Friends took him on a tour, where he saw how cheap foreign labor had literally changed the face of the iconic black neighborhood. As Father Pat remarks, "In all these shops the kids were taking me to, I hardly saw one black man." The reason was that illegal foreign workers had taken jobs that had earlier been filled by African-American citizens. At the point of his self-described epiphany, he began to realize that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.

See also my VDARE.com article about Father Pat, A Rare (?) Immigration Enforcement Voice In The Catholic Clergy.

•   •   •  

Anger Over Wootton Bassett Protest March   [1/06/10]
Here's more from European media about the provocation/march planned by Islamist creep Anjem Choudary and his Islam4UK gang to undermine British society with totalitarian Islam. (See my blog, Immigration Brings the War Home to Britain.)

Meanwhile the Facebook page opposing the Muslim march has reached well over half a million members in just a few days. It's very encouraging that the British people finally appear to be awakening from their PC fog. Two years ago, I wrote Britain: Where Are the Minutemen... Er, Home Guard?; recent events have lessened my despair.

•   •   •  

Costly case raises issues of immigration, health care   [1/05/10]
This is the kind of report that causes immediate throbbing headaches. It's bad enough that taxpayers are forced to pay for healthcare for illegal aliens, but the way the system is structured invites abuse.

For Jeanne d'Arc Kayembe, the trip to Washington in May 2007 was meant to be a month-long respite from an abusive boyfriend and a chance to visit relatives before going home to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to have her first child.
    But searing abdominal pains sent Kayembe, who was six months pregnant, to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. After relieving her pain, a doctor told her to stay in bed and not return to Kinshasa until after she had delivered her baby.
    The Shady Grove emergency room was the entry point for Kayembe, who spoke almost no English and had little money, to a foreign medical system that was, by turns, both frightening and surprisingly welcoming.
    Kayembe gave birth at Shady Grove to a very sick son, Don Emmanuel, who eventually got more than $1 million worth of care, mostly at Children's National Medical Center. U.S. taxpayers and the hospitals footed the bill.
    In some ways, Kayembe and her son are at the white-hot intersection of immigration and health care. But Kayembe's case doesn't fit neatly into those political and policy battles, which often focus on undocumented immigrants. An employee of Congo's telecommunications agency, she came to the U.S. legally, on a tourist visa. And because her son was born here, he became a U.S. citizen and thus was entitled to Medicaid, like any poor child.

I have strong suspicions that Congo Mom planned her visit to drop a jackpot baby. Her advanced age of 39 for a presumably first-time mom is very curious in particular. But say she was innocent of plotting citizenship theft and the story is truthfully presented, then the immigration-asylum-medical complex practically kidnapped her by providing free-to-her healthcare plus social benefits that were too generous to refuse. The story hints that doctors told her the kid needed first-world medical care to survive, and she would be a bad mother to take him home to Congo.

As the debate ensues, legal and undocumented immigrants continue to show up in emergency rooms, where hospitals are required by federal law to treat and stabilize them. In Kayembe's case, medical staff helped in crucial ways that went far beyond health issues.

That's right, the hospital guided Congo Mom into the welfare system that hooked her up with lawyers to solve her immigration issues and with social workers to get an array of free stuff so she could stay in America on the back of the taxpayer. Read the whole article: it's a cautionary tale of do-gooders on steroids.
    In addition, word gets around. Presuming that Obamacare gets passed with no identification required for treatment, there could likely be an uptick (or perhaps a tsunami) in the rush to American hospitals, which exists already.

Children's is known as a place where legal and illegal immigrants, as well as American citizens with little money, can bring their children for top-notch care. In some cases, parents from other countries bring kids to the emergency room directly from the airport, hospital administrators say.
    But that comes at a price. Children's, like many other hospitals, doesn't keep track of how much uncompensated care they provide to noncitizens, documented or undocumented, but they said it is significant. The hospital once spent $3 million treating an illegal immigrant child with leukemia, officials say.

Once again, liberal institutions (like hospitals) are infinitely generous with other people's money.

•   •   •  

New US flight checks 'discriminate against Nigeria'   [1/05/10]
Sensitive Nigerians are complaining of hurt feelings about their inclusion in the alleged uptick of airport security and how it reflects badly on their nation. One of their arguments is that Nigeria is not home to Islamic extremism -- but in fact, lots of jihad activity occurs there.

Nigeria, home of the failed US plane bomber, Monday branded new security measures for passengers flying to the United States unfair and said they amounted to discrimination against its 150 million people.
    The US government announced that travellers from 14 countries, including Nigeria, are to be subjected to extra checks including body pat-downs after a young Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day.
    But Nigeria's Information Minister Dora Akunyili said that Africa's most populous nation did not have a history of terrorism and such a move could not be justified.
    "It is unfair to include Nigeria on the US list for tighter screening because Nigerians do not have terrorist tendencies," Akunyili told journalists.
    "It is unfair to discriminate against over 150 million people because of the behaviour of one person," said the minister.

In fact, Nigeria is home to plenty of religious violence as a result of Muslims trying to enforce sharia law on unwilling Christians. One point of conflict is the desire of non-Muslims to drink beer, and Nigerians have been killed in the occasional outbreaks over alcohol and other religious differences.

Here's a Tube from last August: sharia law of islam in Nigeria Africa

For more on the unrest last summer, see Nigerian Islamist attacks spread (BBC, 7/27/09).

Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militants staged three attacks in northern Nigeria, taking the total killed in two days of violence to 150.
    A BBC reporter has counted 100 bodies, mostly of militants, near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.
    Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire.
    Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools.

Nigerian spinmeisters try to portray their country as being home to moderate Muslims with no history of jihadism, but the facts indicate otherwise.

•   •   •  

Many roosters seized in cockfight raid will be euthanized, official says   [1/04/10]
Police busted a big cockfight a couple days ago west of Fort Worth, and now we learn that over one hundred of those arrested are illegal aliens.

Many of the 176 people arrested at a weekend cockfight in Parker County paid fines, but others still face charges that range from gambling to animal cruelty, authorities said Sunday. [...]
    More than 100 of those arrested were illegal immigrants, Fowler said Sunday.

•   •   •  

From Around the Globe, Serving New York   [1/04/10]
The New York Times is the Energizer Bunny of promoting extreme diversity, and today's collection of puffery featuring immigrant officers of the NYPD does not disappoint. No possible negative is mentioned because the very idea is anathema, since in multicultural America, diversity is the highest good.

The New York Police Department has sent its officers to 11 cities around the globe - even once dispatching a husband and wife to Abu Dhabi. But the return from the world has been far greater.
    Of the 5,593 officers hired since July 2006, when the department began tracking the nationalities of police officers, 1,042 of them were foreign-born - hailing from 88 countries, according to department records.
    The Dominican Republic leads the way, with 263 officers born there. The list also includes nations that would have been well represented two generations ago: Italy, Ireland and Germany, for example. But those three countries account for a total of only eight officers, far surpassed by those born in Haiti, 78; Jamaica, 59; Pakistan, 29; and Russia, 18.
    The department has made a concerted effort to become more diverse: Recruitment advertisements are now routinely placed in foreign-language newspapers, and new recruits are categorized by their potential to be trained for certain assignments - like counterterrorism or community affairs Ñ based on their language, culture or place of birth, something Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly refers to as "selective certification."

"Selective certification" sounds suspiciously like lowered standards. But when diversity is the goal, values like competence tend to suffer.

It has all worked to shatter past notions of a police force made up mostly of white men of European descent who followed their fathers and grandfathers onto the job.
    That, Mr. Kelly said, "has changed dramatically, and it has changed for the better. As the city has become more diverse, the department has become, I believe, the most diverse police department in the world and we're proud of it, and we want to continue to maintain our diversity. It's good for policing; it makes us a more effective organization."

Funny, I always thought multigenerational cop families had extra pride in their profession because it was interwoven with kinship connections. That family value is dismissed also in the rush to diversity.

The department's newest class of rookies underscores the trend.
    Of the 250 new officers who graduated last Monday, 65 of them were foreign-born, hailing from 23 countries, the police said. Those officers spoke a total of 28 different languages, including Bengali, Punjabi, Yoruba and Creole.

The item above is the general article; also part of the package are three upbeat portraits of individual officers, including Detective Ahmed Nasser, Yemen.

Ahmed Nasser was a young recruit in March 2000, one of three people of Arab descent in his Police Academy class, he recalled, and one of about 20 in the entire department.
    At times, his culture could feel singular to him. He recalled his first assignment, in Brooklyn's 76th Precinct, and how he spent quiet moments on lunch breaks bowing toward Mecca and praying in a training room in the police station house.
    "I pray for understanding," he said, recalling his daily ritual.
    Today, there are about 1,500 Muslim officers in the department, said Mr. Nasser, now a detective. Their roots run through the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. They speak Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Urdu, among other languages.

You have to wonder how thoroughly the 1500 Muslim officers were vetted. And even those who don't have a squirrelly past can catch the jihad bug from the internet these days. Islam is a hugely effective method of mass mind control in part because the five-times-daily prayers mean the tenets of Islam are never far from Muslims' thoughts. There have been many cases of Muslim immigrants who appeared assimilated to America, like Minneapolis-raised Shirwa Ahmed who shot hoops with friends and attended Roosevelt High School's prom, but later blew up himself and 30 others in Mogadishu.
    Even one Muslim NYPD officer acting as a spy could cause a great deal of harm. The case of Ali Mohamed comes to mind. He was an al-Qaeda operative who served as a sergeant in the US Army Special Forces, where he gained valuable intelligence about American tactics. He trained terrorists, including some who took part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

•   •   •  

British Al-Qaeda plot to murder family of sniper soldier   [1/03/10]
Britain remains the poster country for why Muslim immigration is a very dumb idea.
    People complain about war, but at least your enemies are geographically distant rather than residing in your neighborhood. Non-discriminating multicultural immigration has imported many thousands of hostiles from the West's most intractable historical opponent. As a result, the war has been brought home to Britain.

British-based al-Qaeda fanatics threatened to kill a soldier's family after learning his sniper team had killed 32 Taliban.
    Armed police were sent to his home after anti-terrorism officers uncovered the plot to murder his parents.
    The plans came to light when the security services monitored "chatter" - believed to be on mobile phones or the internet - between al-Qaeda extremists.
    It is the second time a soldier or his loved ones are known to have been targeted in the UK by groups linked to al-Qaeda. The chilling threats came after the serviceman was praised in reports in the media for his skills during a tour in Afghanistan.
    The soldier, in his 20s and from Scotland, is a "spotter" who has been working alongside a crack marksman in one of the Army's highly-skilled twoman sniper teams. He and his colleague were hailed heroes for gunning down 32 Taliban fighters in Helmand Province. The Sunday Mirror is not identifying him for his and his family's safety.
    Police investigating the threats were sent to his home fearing al-Qaeda sympathisers were on the verge of brutally attacking his relatives in twisted retaliation for his military service. [...]
    The revelation follows a plot by an al-Qaeda cell in Birmingham to kidnap a soldier and behead him on the internet in 2007.

In other Muslified Britain news, the Islam4UK fifth column are stirring up trouble again, after demanding Sharia be made the law of the land a couple months back. Now provocateur Anjem Choudary and his crew are planning a march against British soldiers in a town that is known for its old-fashioned patriotism toward the military.

Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary vows to continue Wootton Bassett march

The controversial cleric, who heads up Islam4UK, has organised a march of 500 people through the Wiltshire town, in memory of Muslims "murdered in the name of democracy and freedom".
    Wootton Bassett has become the main focal point for the nation to show its respect to the troops killed in Afghanistan, with hundreds lining the streets each time a body is repatriated to nearby RAF Lyneham.
    But Choudary said it was unacceptable to honour those killed in the conflict and he would march through the town with supporters to voice opposition at the gatherings.
    Asked why he was against crowds honouring fallen British soldiers, he said: "The same could be said about the Germans fighting for Nazism in the Second World War. Those involved in 7/7 and 9/11 considered themselves to be soldiers.

There is plenty of outrage among the English people about the latest escalation. In fact, there is a Facebook page in opposition to the Muslim march with over 152,000 members as of today.

As Parapundit (Randall Parker) has remarked, "Muslims are nature's way of telling us that multiculturalism is a really bad idea." Yes, and double ditto that for Muslim immigration.

•   •   •  

Cartoonist intruder: 'links to Islamic terrorists'   [1/02/10]
What a surprise. The Somali who tried to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is linked to bigger jihadid groups.

An intruder who was shot and wounded by police after breaking into the Denmark home of Muhammad cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has links to Islamic terrorists, according to Danish intelligence.
    The 28-year-old Somali man is connected to the radical Islamist al-Shabaab militia and al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa, claims Denmark's PET intelligence service.
    Police say the intruder entered the property by smashing a window and was carrying a knife and axe. He has been charged with two counts of attempted murder after a court hearing today in Aarhus, Denmark. The 74-year-old, whose cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad sparked riots five years ago, has had numerous threats on his life and his house in Viby, near Aarhus, is heavily fortified with security modifications.

Below, a report from Sky News about the arrest...

Kurt Westergaard cannot stop sharia alone

Columnist Diana West salutes the courage of the Danish cartoonist while she condemns the cowardice of the American press for refusing to actually show the Mohammed cartoons on the occasion of Westergaard's speaking tour in 2009.

Surprise, surprise, the Westergaard cartoon didn't see media light of day during KurtÕs entire trip. American media disgraced themselves by covering Westergaard, his cartoon, the threats to his life, the barbarous Islamic reaction from the highest reaches of the Islamic diplomatic world to the Islamic street protests that resulted in loss of life, Kurt's principles, free speech - all without ever showing readers and viewers the cartoon itself. (One exception - the Chicago Sun Times, which ran a photo of Kurt holding a laptop displaying the cartoon.)

See also my 2007 blog excoriating the San Francisco Chronicle for its weak response regarding the 'toons: An MSM Celebration of Free Speech!

•   •   •  

Poverty growing in Texas schools   [1/02/10]
Why is there so little interest in the accumulating poverty that is the result of open borders and permissive immigration? How many high-school dropouts does America need? The country requires more educated people who can support the economy rather than a permanent underclass of hostile Mexicans.
    The statistics from Texas schools are ugly.

Almost six out of 10 Texas public schoolchildren hail from low-income families, marking a troubling spike in poverty over the last decade, a new state report shows.
    The increase coincides with a significant jump in the number of Hispanic students, while fewer Anglo students were enrolled last year than 10 years ago, according to the study by the Texas Education Agency. Schools also are educating many more children whose primary language is not English.
    The rapidly changing makeup of the Texas public school classroom poses growing challenges for the state. Impoverished and disadvantaged children are more likely to falter academically and drop out, and educating struggling students can be costly.
    "Economically disadvantaged students have needs," said Sarah Winkler, the president of the Texas Association of School Boards and an Alief school board trustee. "The cost of education is going to go up. Every student has to meet the same standards, and some of those students have never seen a book before." [...]
    The vast majority of the new students in Texas come from low-income families. Last year, poor children made up nearly 57 percent of the state's enrollment, up from 48 percent in the 1998-99 academic year. Many Houston-area school districts serve even larger percentages of impoverished children. [...]
    The racial and ethnic mix of the state's public schools also has changed dramatically in 10 years. Enrollment increased except for Anglos and blacks. The number of Hispanic students surpassed Anglos for the first time in the 2001-02 school year.
    Last year, Hispanics made up nearly 48 percent of the enrollment, followed by whites (34 percent), blacks (14 percent) and Asians (4 percent). Nearly 17 percent of students had limited English-speaking skills.

•   •   •  

Axe-wielding man shot and wounded trying to enter home of Danish 'Mohammed' cartoonist   [1/01/10]
Kurt Westergaard is a free-speech hero for standing up to Muslim bullies after drawing a controversial cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Because of his artistic integrity, he needs 24/7 police protection and his house has special security features, including steel doors and a panic room.

Danish police have shot a man trying to enter the house of a controversial cartoonist armed with an axe.
    A 27-year-old was wounded in the incident at the Aarhus home of Kurt Westergaard, who drew cartoons of Islam's prophet Mohammed.
    "At 10pm this evening, a personal alarm was received from Mr Westergaard's house," chief superintendant Morten Jensen, from East Jutland police, said.
    Officers found a 27-year-old Somalian man "armed with an axe and a knife in either hand".
    Chief superintendant Jensen said: "He broke a window of Mr Westergarrds house. He tried to attack one officer with an axe and he was shot in his right leg and his left arm.
    "He's not seriously injured, he's in custody," he added.
    Westergaard was one of the 12 cartoonists commissioned by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005 to produce caricatures of the Muslim prophet.
    Islamic tradition says no image of him should be produced or shown.
    Muslims were particularly incensed by Westergaard's cartoon, which portrayed Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and was seen as extending the caricature of Muslims as terrorists. The images sparked protests and outrage across the globe.

Muslims want to kill because Islam is portrayed as a violent religion. You can't make this stuff up.

The AP article had more details about the terrifying nature of the attack: Official: Danish police stop attack on cartoonist.

Westergaard, who had his 5-year-old granddaughter on a sleepover, called police and sought shelter in a specially made safe room in the house, Nielsen said. Police arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the assailant, who wielded an ax at a police officer. The officer then shot the man.
    Westergaard could not be reached for comment. He told his employer, the Jyllands-Posten daily, that the assailant shouted "revenge" and "blood" as he tried to enter the bathroom where Westergaard and the child had sought shelter.
    "My grandchild did fine," Westergaard said, according to the newspaper's Web edition. "It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it."

It's not a bad time to review a CBN news segment that explains the long-term goal of Islam to criminalize dissent against the "religion", Freedom of Speech Against Islam Being Silenced in Europe.

•   •   •  

NY's haul of the wild   [1/01/10]
Traditional Chinese medicine is known for using an amazing variety of living things. One indication is the diversity of flora and fauna that are illegally smuggled through New York City into America, nearly all headed for the various Chinatowns. As a result, the dozen inspectors for the US Fish and Wildlife Service have their hands full at the local airports to interdict unlawful cargos.
    The photo at right is of a cobra pickled in rice wine, said to have health benefits, that came from Thailand.

Pickled cobra that "cures" kidney problems. Chinese Viagra made with deer penis. Balms filled with powdered tiger bone. Bushels of bushmeat.
    These are just a few of the exotic and unlawful imports that pour into New York City daily.
    And when the black-market booty is not seized by federal agents at airports, they can be found on the shelves of China town apothecaries, Bronx botanicas or swap meets in ethnic neighborhoods throughout the city. [...]
    A Post interpreter was told recently in Chinatown that he could buy bear gall bladder to clean his blood, and deer penis to improve his sexual prowess.
    Inspectors say many strange objects are used in so-called traditional Chinese medicines -- thought to cure everything from a toothache to cancer.
    Onda said the Chinese use "medicine mules" like other cultures use "drug mules" -- smuggling into the country thousands of hidden pills containing ground-up tiger and leopard bone.
    "If they get it by us they mule it into Chinatown," he said.
    This month, a Liberian-born Staten Island woman, Mamie Manneh, was sentenced to three years probation for smuggling 65 pieces of African bushmeat from illegally poached wild animals. [See blogs about the Liberian monkey meat smuggler.]
    Because the laws that govern trade in wildlife make it illegal to import some objects but legal to sell them once they're in the country, City Hall passed a law in 2004 making it illegal to sell any products that claim to contain rhino and tiger parts.

Chinese medicine aficionados apparently don't care that their purchases further deplete endangered species, like tigers.
    Chinese eating habits also run toward the exotic, which accounts for China being a petrie dish for infectious diseases, like SARS from a few years back. The civet is blamed for SARS because of the animal's availability in China live food markets.
    In addition, nonhuman primates can carry Ebola and tuberculosis, for example. Public health is another reason to close up the ridiculously porous border.

•   •   •  

 

© 2009 Brenda Walker All rights reserved.